Protecting Abortion Rights by ELLEN GOODMAN

This is the only

clinic in the state and this is the only day in the week when a woman can get an abortion in South Dakota. Today, they’ll be treated by

one of four doctors flown in from Minneapolis because it’s impossible to recruit locally. …

One clinic, one day, one

doctor. [mjh: for an entire state.] This is what it’s like in South Dakota right now under

Roe v. Wade. It’s also like this in North Dakota and Mississippi, and not very different in Arkansas or a dozen other states.

Anti-abortion lobbyists here boast that South Dakota is the legislative laboratory for testing and imposing state restrictions. …

It goes without saying that South Dakota is one of seven states with a “trigger law” ready to ban abortion if Roe is overturned.

But something else requires saying: it’s possible to add so many burdens onto the back of Roe that it collapses without ever being

overturned. …

But the question is not just whether [Alito would] overturn Roe. It’s whether he’d let it be

crushed. In 10 years, more than 400 state regulations have been added and more are coming. When do burdens that force

women to state-shop for their rights become “undue”?

How does a law that allow police to arrest you if you don’t show an ID *and* requires a loyalty

oath *and* discourages municipalities from expressing opposition to the USA PATRIOT ACT (a deceitful name) — how does such a law get

passed “with barely a word of dissent”? Because people are scared and legislators are scared of the people. We have nothing to fear but

fear itself. mjh

FOXNews.com –

Politics – New Ohio Law Allows Cops to Request ID

Ohio Republican Gov. Bob Taft on Wednesday signed a bill into law passed by

the state legislature with barely a word of dissent. Supporters of the state’s security measure, which takes effect in 90 days, say

it’s a tool the state can use in fighting terrorism. …

But dissent is building over authority given to police officers, who can

now ask, “What’s your name?” as a tool to fight terrorism. Failure to identify oneself could land an individual in jail.

Critics

call the measure the Ohio Patriot Act. The law also requires those applying for state driver’s licenses to sign a form that they

haven’t supported terrorist organizations.

mjh’s

blog — Let Me See Your ID

US News Article | Reuters.com
By Yereth Rosen

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – The U.S. government

paved the way on Wednesday for oil drilling in an Alaskan region used by migrating caribou and birds, three weeks after Congress blocked

energy development in the nearby Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The Interior Department gave final approval to develop the

Teshekpuk Lake region, setting up an oil-lease sale in September. The decision came a year after the Bureau of Land Management

recommended drilling in the region, which lies west of the wildlife refuge on Alaska’s North Slope.

Teshekpuk’s 389,000 acres

had been protected from oil exploration since the Reagan Administration. In 1998, when former President Bill Clinton opened some areas of

the North Slope to the oil industry, the Teshekpuk Lake area was kept off-limits.

Alito’s club ties prove

troubling decades later Ruben Navarrette Jr.

I’m troubled by three things in all this: that Alito could have been a member of

such an exclusionary group in the first place; that he saw fit to brag about being a member to win favor with the right-wing

hard-liners in the Reagan Justice Department, many of whom took on the dismantling of affirmative action programs as a pet project; and

that he refuses to own up to this now by claiming that he doesn’t remember the first thing about the group.

That, I don’t like.

Alito Disavows

Controversial Group
Nominee Touted His Membership in 1985
By Dale Russakoff, Washington Post Staff Writer

As a Princeton

alumnus and professional basketball player, Bill Bradley in 1973 renounced his membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton, calling it a

“right wing” organization that opposed the admission of women and minorities to the school.

Two years later, another distinguished

alumnus and future U.S. senator, Bill Frist, co-wrote a report denouncing the group for “grossly inaccurate” attacks on the school’s

policies and a “narrow ideological perspective” that had done “a disservice to the university.”

Bush says some war critics irresponsible By Steve

Holland

“A country that divides into factions and dwells on old grievances cannot move forward and risks sliding back

into tyranny,” Bush said.

Wow. Of course, in the quote above, Bush was referring to Iraq.

In the same speech, he advised his adversaries to “watch their words.” Spoken like a true tyrant. mjh

Bush to critics: Don’t

‘comfort our adversaries’ BY JENNIFER LOVEN

President Bush warned Democratic critics of his Iraq policy on Tuesday

to watch what they say or risk giving ”comfort to our adversaries” and suffering at the ballot box in November.

Democrats said Bush should take his own advice.

There are still 10 months left before congressional elections; a recent AP-Ipsos

poll found Americans prefer Democratic control of Congress over a continued GOP majority by 49 percent to 36 percent. But Bush is wasting

no time engaging the battle. …

He said he welcomed ”honest critics,” but he termed irresponsible ”partisan critics who

claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil or because of Israel or because we misled the American people,” as well as ”defeatists

who refuse to see that anything is right.”

With that description, Bush lumped the many Democrats who have accused him of

twisting prewar intelligence with the few people, mostly outside the mainstream, who have raised issues of oil and Israel. …

Democrats said Bush has no business trying to define what sort of talk is acceptable.

ACLU president draws links between Bush spying, Nixon lying and Martin Luther King

Jr. by Daniel Strumpf

The ACLU recently placed two full-page ads in The New York Times comparing Bush to Richard Nixon.

“I think there is a very strong comparison between the two, in terms of having such an exaggerated sense of the power of the

executive branch to ride roughshod over the rights of people who aren’t even suspected of any crimes at all other than political

dissent,” she said. “To me, that links up directly to Martin Luther King.

“Martin Luther King should be remembered not only for

his towering contributions to social justice and racial equality but also as a victim of government spying and abuses of power by the FBI

because of disagreement with his ideas.”

Strossen points out that King was punished for attempting to exercise his First Amendment

rights and draws a direct analogy to the monitoring of citizens Bush perceives to be enemies of the U.S.